The War Tapes (2006)
Average Rating: 7.9/10
Reviews Counted: 64
Fresh: 63 | Rotten: 1
Candid, eye-opening footage gives viewers a close-up -- and educational -- look at the experiences of American soldiers in Iraq, a viewpoint not normally seen.
Average Rating: 8.2/10
Critic Reviews: 25
Fresh: 24 | Rotten: 1
Candid, eye-opening footage gives viewers a close-up -- and educational -- look at the experiences of American soldiers in Iraq, a viewpoint not normally seen.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 1,655
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Movie Info
Three soldiers offer viewers a close-up and deeply personal view of the war in Iraq in this documentary. Filmmaker Deborah Scranton gave digital video cameras to three National Guard volunteers who were called up for duty in Iraq and asked them to keep a visual diary of what they saw and how they felt about it. The three men who took Scranton up on her offer were Sgt. Zack Bazzi, Spc. Mike Moriarty, and Sgt. Steve Pink. Bazzi is a Lebanese immigrant who previously fought in Bosnia and Kosovo and
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All Critics (67) | Top Critics (25) | Fresh (64) | Rotten (1) | DVD (3)
This is an important film, but be prepared for shocks.
Top CriticArguably the most vital and eye-opening documentary yet made regarding the United States' current military entanglement.
The film is one of the most urgent and immediate nonfiction works we may ever see.
No matter what you think of the U.S. presence in Iraq, the film will disturb or startle or dismay you.
A riveting firsthand look at the conflict on the battlefield, in the barracks, and on the home front, unfiltered by any partisan prejudice.
A remarkable film, a you-are-there document that allows us to worry about the soldier who's risking his life even as we ponder the rights and wrongs of this military engagement.
The direct-cinema authenticity that a soldier's eye gives to this largely street-fought war...lends The War Tapes its primary strength.
Intentionally or not, the movie locates a strain of ignorance to go along with the bravery
They expected tension; what they didn't expect was to serve out their year-long deployment as, essentially, the world's most targeted grocery store security.
The director has managed to shape real people's lives into a drama, without imposing ideological filters, and without sacrificing what makes them real.
If the in-country chaos has beginnings and endings, its effects are, as Steve Pink says, "lasting."
Gripping, boring, disturbing, amusing, enlightening and frustrating.
A scary diary of their increasingly dehumanized daily lives (mostly spent protecting supply convoys on the dangerous highways) and the movie evokes the futile larger war around them in a series of haunting images.
What's here speaks for itself, and what it says is often surprising and deeply unsettling, regardless of one's political leanings.
Informative as most of the partisan-produced, anti-war documentaries that we've seen in the last several years have been, none match this one for its wide-ranging scope and lived-it-at-ground-zero truth.
...it would make a great double bill with the recent My Country, My Country, which looks at things from the other side.
The film succeeds because of its refreshingly low-key emotional approach and its refusal to impose character arcs or political agendas on its subjects' footage.
Universally Worthwhile -- not just as a documentary on this war. But as a documentary on this war, I think it's quite interestingly balanced.
A painfully intimate snapshot of who they are, the damage they inflict on an unseen enemy and what they endure while doing so, in all its absurd, dehumanizing and ennobling contradictions.
As raw and disturbing as it is wry and satirical, the resulting portrait is a powerfully unique film that goes beyond commenting on Operation Iraqi Freedom to become a provocative meditation on war itself.
The edited footage has an intensity and immediacy you won't find on cable news networks.
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Culmed from over 700 hours of footage shot by three members of a National Guard deployment in Iraq, The War Tapes smartly forsakes a documentary format's supposed objectivity for a frank immersion into what may be one of America's darkest hours. Given a director's individual political, philosophical, and religious convictions, objectivity in documentaries proves an impossibility anyway, especially considering how awash our culture is in the subjective American media. The soldiers take notice of this and the corporate profiteers, testament to Scranton's choosing her narrators well, an astute mix of humor, pathos, courage, and, yes, hope.
When Audie Murphy so wisely quipped "War is hell," there came the aspersion that heaven might also exist within the same continuum. Juxtaposing footage from the frontlines of war-torn Iraq with that of families on the homefront, The War Tapes only shows us that the same maudlin spirit seems to permeate the collective mindset-especially after the soldiers return as changed men-a telling commentary on how weary and identity-challenged our embattled society may have become.
Bottom Line: A stark and frank home movie from Hell-on-Earth.